Click

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MY NUMBER ONE MUST-HAVE

Back in 2000, I was in my early twenties, and working as a receptionist at the total epitome of a dead-end job. My office was the kind of place where company executives were perfectly comfortable spouting off racist and sexist remarks. I’d flinch every time our Vice President refused to take a call from salespeople and other contacts just because they happened to be black. I tried to ignore being spoken to like a child merely because I was a female in charge of answering the phones. My gut, of course, told me to speak up. My gut knew I shouldn’t sit idly by while this stuff went on. My gut said I probably shouldn’t work for people who’d condone that kind of behavior. But I’d gotten really good at ignoring my gut.

In my spare time after work, I wasted a lot of time on the internet and watched mindless television. I tried to broaden my life with hobbies and interests – though none of them stuck – and I dreamed of going back to college to complete my undergrad degree so I’d be qualified for jobs I didn’t hate. A college dropout was not how I’d envisioned myself. I’d graduated near the top of my class and had big plans for programs at universities in cities full of possibility. I’d seen my future self as a writer, a theatre director or something else insanely creative.

But those programs, and therefore – as I saw it – those possible futures, took money. And even community college, which I’d resigned myself to, took a focus and dedication I’d found myself lacking, now that my original dreams had been dashed. I couldn’t figure out a new path. Instead of summoning strength to forge ahead on a new one or seeking advice to find one, I just stalled. When my then-coffeeshop employer offered me a fulltime position that would keep me from attending classes, I accepted. It would just be for a semester, I told everyone, and then I’d be back on track with a new and better plan.

One semester turned into two and that year turned into five. The coffeeshop gave way to jobs at the mall which led eventually to this office job. I gave up on my creative pursuits: I’d stopped writing fiction (I was hardly even reading fiction!), I’d given up the piano, and I could no longer be found backstage volunteering at local theatres. All of that seemed to belong to the old me, and even when I tried to embrace one of these lost pieces of myself, the memories of time lost and dreams discarded were too heavy with regret and shame. What was lost remained lost.

One night, killing time by going through my usual online routines, I ran across an article on Salon about a band called Sleater-Kinney. I must have read the piece five times; by the next day I was still thinking about it. Women rocking out against the sexist culture, the rape and sexual harassment that went on at Woodstock ’99, and how the notion of “girl power” undermined feminism by taking the anger and power of Riot Grrrl and making it pink and glittery and therefore safe for the masses? I hadn’t even known I’d been consumed with these subjects too, but that article awakened multiple wordless emotions that must have been simmering near the surface the whole time.

Since I was a total musical theatre nerd whose CD player was usually loaded up with Sondheim, I couldn’t imagine that I’d actually like listening to Sleater-Kinney. So I buried my curiosity along with that tumble of emotions the article had generated in me, just like I had nearly ten years ago after reading about Riot Grrrl in Sassy magazine. And I guess it could have gone the same way, except that a few weeks later I was flipping channels and landed on MTV2 where this video of three women rocking out played. Their sound was like nothing in my music library for sure, but instead of being turned off I was glued to my screen.

And then the video came to an end, the information went up on the screen, and I learned I’d been watching and listening to Sleater-Kinney. Within five minutes I’d already ordered their latest album All Hands on the Bad One. It arrived just a couple days later.

By now I was actually nervous! This album had been pretty built up, considering I’d somehow gotten obsessed with it and so far had only heard about sixty seconds of one song. Still, I marched right to my CD player, dropped in the disc, and got ready to listen. And I did. And I listened again. I listened a lot that night. I couldn’t get enough.

To me on that night, Sleater-Kinney’s music resonated for a lot of reasons. Even though my parents had brought me up on 1960s protest folk music, I’d never heard women singing about sexism beyond, you know, Gwen Stefani being “Just a Girl.” There was something revolutionary in that, in taking up your own fight, in not being afraid to put it all out there in a time where our culture wasn’t exactly clamoring to hear about women’s struggles. When I listened to, for example, “#1 Must Have” or “the Professional,” my brain was flooded with the same kind of recognition the article had brought on but in a far bigger, more emotional way. It pulsed through my skin.

I felt ideas building inside of me. There was suddenly the possibility that life was limitless, that I was limitless too. No longer did I define ideas and myself based on what others told me. If these three women could kick down the old guard, why couldn’t I?

Of course, there’s also the fact that Sleater-Kinney is, besides their feminist ideals, a really kick-ass band. Corin Tucker’s wail is like no other; it raised the hairs on the back of my neck with a thrill. I’d never heard anyone, much less a woman only a few years older than myself, make noise like this. Carrie Brownstein on guitar was something other-worldly too; very few wield the instrument with the skill she possessed. And my quite rhythmless self marveled at Janet Weiss’s mastery of the drums. These were musicians. And thanks to them, my understanding of what music could be and where it could take you blossomed.

FULL ESSAY APPEARS IN CLICK, SEAL PRESS, 2010